Our spring break college tour plans have been foiled by the fact that 3 of the 5 colleges we planned to visit are on spring break at the same time and not offering tours.
We are left with the alternate options of waiting until summer to tour all 5 in one longer trip, fit a couple of individual tours into the two long weekends left in the school year or attend Open Houses sponsored by each school.
When touring with D15, we did 2 open houses and 4 individual tours. For us, the open houses turned out to be a waste. There were so many kids, everything was crowded, there was a sense of disorganization, nothing was personalized and there was nothing specific to draw her in. The individual tours were fantastic. The tours of campus ranged from 8-15 kids, they were very informative, personal tours and my daughter left with a great sense of which schools would work or not work for her.
I was curious what experiences others have had with open houses and if you felt they were well planned, well executed, worthwhile visits to make. We are looking more towards the Southeast, but feel free to list any school whose open house tours were exceptional.
With a couple of exceptions, we also preferred the information session/tour to the huge open house programs. We didn’t look at schools in the Southeast but in general I think it is important to look carefully at the schedule for the open house (which are usually found online) to see if the school offers something that is different/helpful enough (ex. a chance for prospective students to sit in on a class, meet professors etc.) to make it worth the crowds.
I’ve only done one open house, and won’t do any in the future unless there’s a very specific reason. I found the open house to be well organized, but it was very impersonal and just too large. As a result of the giant crowd, it felt like people got pulled into it that normally don’t do these things and weren’t prepared (our tour guide and one person leading an information session in particular).
If the school will do it, I prefer a “set up your own” visit where your kid can meet with someone (department head, professor, etc) in their major, sit in on a class and eat in a dining hall in addition to the campus tour. Best yet is a one-on-one meeting with a student. One school matched D with a personal tour guide in her area of interest who was in the Honors College, another school arranged lunch with a student for us, and we’ve also connected using personal contacts.
@VaNcBorder We toured schools within a days driving range in PA, NJ, NY, CT and RI but will give you my general impressions. I recommend starting as soon as you can by doing a few short trips during the school year. We started our tours in the sophmore year so we had plenty of chances to visit when colleges were in session. We were able to spread out the touring timeline at a leisurely pace and made mini vacations out of several visits.
When we crammed too many schools together it became tiring at the end and those schools we visited near the end did not get a fair shake. We also tried not to do more than one school per day unless they were within 30 minutes of each other.
The admissions presentation and the campus tour were basically the same whether we attended the OH or the Individual Tour. We have done both the Open House and Individual Tour at the same colleges so I can compare apples to apples. Our strategy was to make short individual tours of many different schools in the first round to see a variety by location, size, etc., and it did not matter if the college was in session or not. We ruled out many schools that way and went back to the ones we liked a second time and specifically chose to go to Open Houses held when classes were in session.
What I like best about most Open Houses is the inclusion of a panel discussion with 6-10 current students. It was most informative to hear the unrehearsed answers to a wide variety of questions from the audience when there are hundreds of other parents and prospective students. Some Open Houses give you an opportunity to have lunch in the student dining hall which is another way you can observe how people interacted at a school.
The Open Houses were run in several different styles, primarily driven by how big the school was and the size of the visiting crowd, but I thought they were all highly organized in their own way. The smaller schools generally told you exactly where to go while the larger schools often gave you a menu of activities to choose from. My best advice is to study the itinerary ahead of time and be ready with your choices on those that are less structured. I preferred the ones with choices.
So basically:
Initial Round - Quantity was more important so we chose shorter Individual Tours
Second Round - Quality was more important so we chose the more comprehensive Open Houses
We went to some good open house events…and others that were not so good. We also went to some infomsessions that were good…and others that were not so good. We also went on tours that were good…and some not so good.
@newjerseydad888, your plans make sense. Perhaps because the 2 open houses we went to were at large schools (both over 20,000 students), they were much less personal than had we been at much smaller schools. I can see how a smaller school open house may have been less overwhelming and more student focused.
I think our plan for now is to stick with individually scheduled tours (as of now we have 4 scheduled for both March and April) and then as any acceptances come in next fall/winter, joining an accepted student open house that perhaps will have a different, more focused, organized feel to it.
@thumper1, your response is exactly why I started this thread. I know every school is different and everbody’s experiences touring will yeild such individual opinions that I was hoping to get feedback on some specific schools really knocked it out of the park with their open houses.
For us, the group tours seemed to be all the same thing. We also found that some guides were better than others but the one trick that seemed to work was when we would walk from one stop to the other, if you stayed by the guide you could ask some more personal questions as they weren’t necessarily shouting an answer to the group.
What worked the best was one of the schools my D was interested in she knows a few people who are either freshman or sophomores there now. On one visit, my D and her friend texted one of the girls and met up with her. They were able to get a much better feel for the dorms by hanging out in their friends dorm room rather than the 5 minutes in the standard tour dorm. They also were able to ask her questions and get answers that you wouldn’t get on the tour.
We did a few of the open houses, and we did the meetings with the individual department my D is interested in majoring and those were nice but again, you sort of get the University approved answers. You get the real answers when you can talk to a student that has nothing to do with the tour.
Now, you might not know anyone at the schools you are looking at but if you do, and you can leverage that relationship then we found it to be effective. Also, I’ve found it pretty easy to ask a quick question to the students while waiting for your Starbucks drink to be made. Easy to get a few questions answered from real students in a very casual environment. Also, a lot of students or past students work in the restaurants just off campus, easy to get a few questions answered that way as well. Now granted, these are more geared towards the overall school, environment, general campus questions.
Totally depends on the school. We did the tour/info of our flagship and we got nothing.Just some generalities which we knew already. Then we went to the open house and it was awesome. My kid’s intended major had a table with professors and students. They divided the tours by interest, showed us labs, classrooms etc. A lot of students around to ask particular questions. Also they offered small info session by major. Made us feel how a huge school can feel smaller.
The very best tour info session we attended in 28 college visits between two kids…was at University if South Carolina in 2004 summer. There was no info session at the time. Instead, there was a LONG tour…with the best, most well informed tour guide you could even imagine. He actually gave the info session while he toured us. Large public university…excellent excellent tour.
The absolute worst for us was Claremont McKenna. The info session was adequate, but really focused on acceoted students (our kid was a HS junior). The tour was absolutely THE worst of any we went on. Tour guide looked like she rolled out of bed for the tour, she didn’t answer any questions. None. Honestly she was awful. Small private university…terrible tour.
Other notably poor tours, but with decent info sessions…Pepperdine and Davidson. In both cases, the tour guides were very cheerful, but ill informed. The info sessions were good.
Elon…decent tour, decent info session…but the adcoms DD met was rude.
College of Charleston. Excellent info session. Excellent tour. And they had the sense to divide the group in half when it was apparent that it was too large.
Santa Clara University…excellent tour, excellent info session. But then…we are biased on this one as it’s where DD went!
If you sell us which schools younplan to visit, perhaps it would be easier for folks to weigh in on the pros and cons of the tours.
Thank you @dcolosi for the helpful tips. My son does know kids at two of the schools he is interested in (ironically, the same 2 that we did open houses at) so he has plans to stay with one overnight in the spring or early next fall and he will meet up with the other one when we visit in the spring. I know both experiences will be immensely helpful to him.
What I remember from our previous experiences touring with D15 is that when we did one the open houses, a large group of us followed a student with a colored balloon from building to building while she yelled bits of information about where we were. When we did one of the individual tours, my daughter walked, literally, arm in arm with our tour guide and was able to ask a lot of questions that were answered with honesty and enthusiasm. Hugely different experiences.
My S18 is much more reserved and quiet than my daughter and unless a guide or student is forthcoming with information, it is unlikely for him to ask questions and seek out specific pieces of information.
@thumper1, our list is still a work in progress but a lot of the schools on there have remained a constant. As of now, we have individual tours scheduled at:
UNC-Wilimington
Flagler College (not on his radar bc of its size among other factors, but we will be staying in St. Augustine for several days so we figured why not. I have told him not to count anything out at this early stage)
App State (this is the one school that I have heard has an amazing Open House and we had planned to do that, but as Prom falls on the same day, we had to switch tactics)
Elon (also, not on original list bc of size, etc… but we will have to pass right by there on the way to App State. He went to the meeting at school when the Elon admissions rep came and really liked what they had to say so again, I said why not- you never know.
Other schools on the list (while others have changed, these 7 have remained a constant).
Virginia Tech
James Madison U
University of Delaware
University of New Hampshire
Auburn
University of South Carolina (visited with D15 and D18 loved it)
Clemson (a reach but also visited withe D15 and it became D18’s favorite)
Well…I gave you my feedback on Elon, and U of South Carolina. My kid loved South Carolina as well, and it was her second choice in the end (acceoted in November…got a McKissick Scholarship too). And part of,the reason she loved it …the tour was AWESOME.
@VaNcBorder - My D and I went to an open house at Elon last April and we were both turned off. That was the only open house we went to among visits to many colleges in the spring and summer. For us, it was just too crowded, impersonal and disorganized. I had to go to an hour-long session with other parents where 4 faculty members answered questions. While they were knowledgeable about some things, there was no presentation and it was not helpful at all. I raised my hand for 30 minutes so I could ask a question about the English dept. and writing, and was never called on. The campus was beautiful though!
@elena13 your experience with Elon’s open house sounds like our experiences at both open houses we attended. We went to Virginia Tech and James Madison a day apart and while VT seemed a little more organized than JMU, both were too crowded and very impersonal with no one on one interaction from anybody.
That being said, we know both are great schools so I think that had we signed up for a tour on a regular day, we would have come away with a much better view of both schools. I tried not to let the negative experience influence our opinion and realized that from here on out, we would avoid open houses if possible.
Our tour at Elon will hopefully be a more personal, smaller group and we will get a more realistic feel for the school.
When we toured Elon, it was in the summer. Our tour guide was brand new. We were the ONLY ones in his tour! And he went to a private school very near our home. We cut him some line because it was his first tour…but really…he was terrible. And not particularly personable.
Then we met the adcom after the tour. He was abrupt…bordering rude.
Campus was very pretty… and we know several very happy and proud grads. But we drove away…with no second thoughts about the place.
@VaNcBorder I agree it could depend on the school. For both my D16 and S18 they prefer the individual tours and even those have ranged from 2-20 people. They felt it was easier to ask questions (although like your son my son is less likely to ask). We toured a few in NC including Elon. Our tour guide was very honest when we asked what she liked least. She said it was very hard for her to fit it with so many privileged students, had thought about transferring, but was trying to stick it out. This is not a knock on Elon as it has a lot going for it. It’s just a possible difference between individual tours vs open house.
We LOVED our tour of Elon this past October. We had the most wonderful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide. If convenient, you may want to consider touring again.
As a subtopic of this thread, I have come up with a list of possible questions to ask during our tours so I thought I would list them here for anybody else that is interested:
What are the most popular Freshman classes?
Do classes fill up quickly or is it easy to get into classes you want/need?
Are classes taught by professors or by teaching assistants?
What kind of tutoring services are offered? Are they free?
What kind of Freshman Orientation Programs do you have?
How easy/hard is it to get an internship?
What kind of volunteer opportunities are there here? Are they mostly on or off campus?
What intramurals do you have here? (You can ask abt specific ones- D18 would ask about golf, fishing, etc...)
What dorm(s) do most Freshman live in? Do most Freshman get their 1st choice?
Do most students move off campus after Freshman year?
Do a lot of students go home on the weekends?
What do most students do here on the weekends? Does the school sponsor a lot of weekend activities?
How do Freshman get matched up with a roommate? Thru Facebook? A specific website? Randomly placed?
Do I need a car here? How easy is it to get to town, participate in off campus activities, grab some groceries, etc.. without one?
If I live far away and can't go home for every break, does the campus (dorms, dining halls, etc...) stay open?
I am sure there are many more questions that can be asked, but these are the ones that would be important to me and my son and things it would have been nice to ask when touring with D15. Again, I was so unprepared for it all the first go around, that I have turned into a walking College Info Encyclopedia now!
I’m going to be VERY frank with you. If you want to ask any of these questions…please have your student ask them. I’ve been to a lot of info sessions and tours. My kid was a student ambassador and did tours at her school. Please…let your KID ask these questions.
My kid had questions about the school…but she actually made an appointment for an interview with the admissions folks. That is where she asked these types of questions…not at the info session…and not on the tour.
Also, read the school websites because some of this is covered on the websites.
I know you want to know these answers…and they are looking worth knowing…but I don’t think you really want to ask 15 of your own questions during the info session.
thank you @thumper1 for your response. Yes, we would love to know the answer to all 15 questions at every school my son is interested in, but we do also know that in reality we will get the answers through the admissions presentation, the tour guide, or by my son asking any number of these questions if the opportunitly presents itself.
The questions were listed more as a guide then as a premeditated list where we would be waiting with paper and pen to jot down all of the answers. I posted them in reponse to an earlier conversation I had with a friend whose son is also a junior and she asked what questions I wish we had asked when touring with D15. She suggested I post the questions as they were very helpful to her as a first time college parent.